Loading...Human language is an incredibly interesting thing, not only in the way it was developed but also in the way it is used. It is something that seems so crafted, and can’t be a product of anything other than human ingenuity. But then a guy named George Zipf comes along and throws us a curveball: why, then, if you graph out the most commonly used words by their rank, you get a straight line? A perfectly predictable, oddly straight line. This phenomenon is called Zipf’s Law, and appears in many different seemingly random aspects of our world, from earthquake magnitudes to last names.
In this great video by Vsauce, Michael takes you on a ride through the world of Zipf’s Law. You’ll learn all about language, mathematics, and why life can sometimes appear to be more orderly and mathematical than it really is. As per Vsauce style, you will be taken through a bunch of different, equally interesting examples of Zipf’s Law, and in the end will learn a lot about Zipf, mathematics, and much more.